In His Wake
by Servant of Fire
Summary: John and Mary continue Sherlock's legacy after he has died. The secret of their new found deductive powers? Sherlock never really left them, after all.
1. Chapter 1

**In His Wake~**

Sherlock was dead from the beginning.

It had been on a case, ofcourse. The Never Ending Game. The Game Without Winners...

"Every good story has to have a hero, and a villain, and a Romeo, and a Juliet..." they said. And so they had taken his own Romeo and Juliet. The Watsons.

And Sherlock had gone,as every good hero does. Because regardless what he said,heroes are amongst us, not in capes,or white armor,but as everday sinners, and he was amongst that mighty company, whether he wanted to be or not. And he had come, as swift as his feet could carry him. He had played the game. He had died accordingly.

It had been very brutal torment.I will not say here,suffice it was beyond description of words. They had forced John and Mary to watch. And because they were his captive audience, he pulled through it all. He played the game for their sake, and he won. And when it was over, beaten, they left them there, on the cold dark floor of an abandoned factory. And John took him in his arms.

"There's nothing you can do to save me, I can feel that I am slipping away, so please don't waste the few precious minutes I have left to tell you what I must..." Sherlock gasped, opening his eyes. "And please, dont cry Mary, darling, I need you both to concentrate. You will need the gift I give you..."

Thinking this were no more than his talking out his head, they humored him. John took his hand. And Sherlock clutched it with all his dieing strength..

"The mind is the key to the palace... Remember,..." he had gasped, "Take the keys, John. Use it as a fortress,...I must go now. I thank you for all you have done, I love you both, and wish you many happy years... Tell Molly "Thank you",..." His eyes were fluttering now. And he reached and clutched John's face in both hands, leaning close to his eyes. He breathed softly his last breath into his face,as if passing said gift to him, and with it he whispered,

" I will see you again..."

And so he died ,before our story has even begun. And yet he is ,of all the chiefest of the characters, the one most present in it.

Let us begin...


	2. Chapter 2 Tools Not Toys

**Chapter 1: Tools Not Toys~**

_12 years after the death of Sherlock Holmes~_

"John Hamich Watson! You aren't as young as you used to be! You're 47 now!"

The jeep turned on two wheels, mud slung everywhere, bullets whizzed past them, and Mary proceed to try and change the clip in the pistol she was wielding.

"You never tried to stop Sherlock from these stunts!" he protested, with a laugh.

"And he didn't outlive his 30's!" she was cross, he knew it. He turned the jeep back on all four wheels, and reached and patted her knee.

"You'll look back on this and laugh."

_"John Hamich Watson...You AREN'T as young as you used to be. Listen to your wife, she atleast has some sense. You're coming in too hot. Pull out, let them come to you..." _

"AH! Who died and made you the king?" he thought, annoyed.

_"Hmm, as I recall I died and was always the king of MY mind palace. Pull off the road!"_

Mary ,of course, herself able to go in and out of the "mind palace" now, had heard the whole dialogue .

" I won't be looking back when I laugh, after all." she teased.

"Oh shush you!" John laughed, "Alright, Your Majesty, see, I'm off-roading! Oh look ,trees! Was this really such a brilliant idea, Sherlock?"

The little jeep brushed through them with the ease of a salamandar. The big truck the villains were in, however, flipped on its head like a fat turtle.

_"Shall I tell him, I told him so?" _ Sherlock asked, and Mary clapped.

"Well done, Your Majesty."

Away in the mind palace, Sherlock bowed.

_"Now what did we observe from that heated encounter? Feed me information, m'dears! Ah, I'm on fire!"_

"The lovely Mary Watson, has been taking notes." John laughed, and Mary presented a piece of paper to John with a flourish.

"And I took pictures!" John cried, and pulled out his phone.

Mary began reading, and John pulled up corresponding images of the details she had noted.

"A man, Italian, deformed ear, tattoo of a mermaid on his right arm, wears his shoes too big, is under weight,..and"

_"Ex member of the Italian navy, and a victim of human trafficking, not a threat."_

"Ok,"Mary laughed, "God, you just keep getting better and , let me see, a chinese woman, around 30, scar under her left eye, protruding jaw, wears a bullet proof vest,"

_"The drug dealer's wife, scar is from an accident in the fishing boat they used for smuggling, the Italian is their personal slave. Now, the last one. There were 3 in the truck."_

John smiled at Mary, never ceasing to be impressed. "The last one, was a white male around 17. Has cropped white hair, dyed of course, and a tatoo of a blue star on his wrist." she concluded.

Sherlock's silence told them they had found the final piece to a puzzle they'd been working on for weeks.

_"And again, as I always say, it just has to be that simple, doesn't it?The boy is the diversion. He's meant to look like he's their captive, so that the humanitarian agents will go after him. Probably already filed a missing persons report, lets see, judging by his size, shape of the face, he's Swedish. Check Stockholm's high alerts. The boy is to divert us from the Italian, the Italian is the one that is in dire need of rescue. The boy is the accomplice to the drug dealing couple. The tattoo on his wrist is the identification of the ring he's in. The slave has something, of confidence to the Italian navy,to the security of the naval bed of the Meditteranean...Oh my God! the game is afoot!"_

"It could be just as easy, as going back and checking their bodies. A crash like that could've killed them?" John asked.

_"Oh come, John, use your head. If they were dead, I could interrogate them myself, and we'd need not be having this conversation. The woman is armed, in her long jacket sleeves. A grenade. I suggest you both pull out...Let's not risk this mission now..."_

John laughed, "Mary, he's done it again!" he cried, and happily leaned over and kissed her.

They sped off into the trees,in sudden silence, hot on the heels of solving another case.

It had been this way ever since he'd gone before them.

The gift he had passed to them was access into his great mind palace,perhaps a more literal place than previously they had imagined.

As they sat now thoughtful, they realized what a tool he had given them, though sometimes it was more like a toy.

They had actually never been happier than they were now, fulfilling his purpose in the earth...

Contemplative silence turned to giddiness as they drew nearer their destination,

_"Tools, not toys, children. Stay focused!" _ Sherlock laughed as they drove out of the woods...


	3. Chapter 3 Where Credit Is Due

**Chapter 2: Where Credit is Due~**

By nightfall, the case was fully solved. The most notorious drug ring of our future history was busted up, (being Sherlock had died in the year in which we currently live, and this , remember is all happening 12 years from this date) and the Italian was on his way home. The Great Sea's confidence was once again secure, and the Italian navy could rest at ease.

"Dr. Watson, and missus," laughed an agent of the U.N. " You have done it again! Won't you take the credit this time! How many cases does this make,187?"

John and Mary exchanged a glance, "Well, we don't really feel like the credit totally belongs to us?"

"Who then does it belong to,John?-come!" the agent laughed.

John drew a deep breath..." I had an excellent teacher...If history asks...his name was Sherlock Holmes."

"History never remembers the teacher!" the UN agent laughed,having meant no harm, but this struck a mighty blow to John, and he didn't hear what else was said. He said nothing else on the way back to the hotel they'd be staying in there in Sicily, he would've said nothing at all for days maybe, just struck speechless by the thought that no one would remember the master detective, unseen hand in solving all the world's most baffling mysteries.

John may have let himself sink into the Oblivion(as Mary called the very deep sadness welling up in him from time to time), had she not come to him,and wrapped her arms around him and said," I'm going to see him, would you like to come too?"

Then his eyes lit up, and he followed her.

Access to the "mind palace" was much easier than one might think. All the two of them had to do was find a very quiet place to sit, this place being the couch in their hotel room,join hands if they were going to said place together,close their eyes and just begin to concentrate. It was like diving under water with your eyes closed, and feeling around with your hands along the bottom of a pool, until you found a shiny coin.

In a few moments, they saw themselves standing in an orchard. It looked like English countryside, like John's old grandfather, Silas Watson's, home in Devon.

This had been where John had spent the summer as a boy. How on earth did Sherlock, the creator of the mind palace, have access to this place?

12 years of wandering here, and John still hadn't but barely begun to understand the manner of reality it was. Perhaps he never would...

It didn't matter after a moment though. And neither did what the agent had said. And really nothing else mattered much at all.

For just then Sherlock came running up through the back field,swift as a spring deer, and leaped over the fence, stumbling on his long legs like a foal.

He was smiling broadley, and his raven curls were a mess, like a nest of shadow. Silver-green eyes sparkled in the twilight(for it was twilight) and he let out a huff.

"Hello, Watsons!" he laughed, taking a large bite of the apple he'd risked his limbs to get,somewhere away in yonder dark wood, where the Hell Hounds had taken up residence. He chewed at it,a boyish expression on his face, as he visually scanned them both,

"It doesn't take an ounce of my deductive power to tell me that John, you sir, have been seriously offended ,quite recently infact. Oh, but it does take a bit of it to conclude that you haven't phoned your sister!"

Mary folded her arms, and looked at him, mouth held crookedly. "You said you would call her after that bit of trouble in Turkey. Two weeks ago!"

John laughed nervously, "Did I...say that ,really?"

"John!"

"Alright!"he held his hands up in surrender, " I'll phone Harry! I'm also getting her a new ringtone, "Call Me When You're Sober".We're talking on my terms, until then.

Mary nodded, as if that settled some business. Sherlock went on munching his apple in silence. Ghostly silence. But ,naturally! was he not?...

The Watson's just staired at him, until he cleary felt violated,and he tossed the core away.

"Well?"

"Well?" they asked in unison.

"Well, you cleary came for a reason, or you would not be here right now, would you?"

A wistfull sound to his voice. As if contiuation in this strange half-light world was very lonely.

"John was going into his Oblivion.."Mary piped up. "That cocky agent, you know the UN guy, what's his name, Armistead?...He said something really off."

"What did he say?"

"Well, he said that history wouldn't remember you..." Mary bowed her head, suddenly herself,very sad...

Sad to remember...For wasn't the young fellow before them, a vision only? A memory, that would fade when they opened their eyes. Animated only by the part of himself he left behind for them when he left the world, long ago...

But he chuckled,and ran a hand through the inky mop he couldn't hope to restore to any neatness any time soon.

"Like I owe history that much!"he laughed, and drew his brows up. "Musty old books, my face plastered all through them, in that ridiculous what was it,Death Frisbee? Deer Slayer?..ridiculous hat,yeah?...How dull, no sorry, I don't care for history to remember me .It can take its business elsewhere!"

"Oh, I figured you would feel that way, but for some reason, John here, didn't hold well with it.."

John laughed nervously at the look Sherlock gave him.

" I just think credit should go where it's due,is all."

Sherlock stretched ,and smiled smugly," The point is, the cases are getting solved. Excellent work, on that last one, by the way. The picture thing is..good. I never thought to do it, but I didn't really need it,I have albums and albums full of images,of everything I've seen and done, right here." he smiled, and winked, and they laughed, wondering what all he was thinking.

He turned,halfway towards the field he'd just come from, as if he'd been called. Maybe he had, to another task, one that would lead them that much farther down the "rabbit hole" that was the magnficent, inexplicable palace of his mind.

He turned and smiled, "Don't get so caught up on who's taking credit for things, that you miss the point of the things that you are doing!" he laughed.

"Now, I leave you both to it; you have greater mysteries to solve than drug dealing circles,and missing military paperwork..."

He nodded at them , and turned, and started walking off into the sunset.

The Watsons opened their eyes , and were back on the couch in the Sicilian hotel.


	4. Chapter 4 A Case for the Purpose

**Chapter 3: A Case for The Purpose~**

Neither of them spoke about it, but the Watsons were in many ways, deeply troubled, by that last encounter with Sherlock.

What had he meant by the last thing he had said?

After 12 long years, they decided it was time to get to the bottom of it all. The bottom of why they were still able to see him in the first place. The bottom of the

"Greater Mystery" he ever was alluding to.

It was time to find out where he had gone, all those long years ago.

And for that they thought maybe, they would have to go see her...

Molly Hopper had been a very special friend of the detective in question. And he likewise , for all his machinistic ways, had been very special, and daresay, charming, to her. She recalled very many evenings spent helping him with his cases, in this same little room, of the St. Bart's mortuary she had worked in now for years and years. Many favors faithful Molly had done for her dear friend. Even assisted in his disappearing act, when he had faked his suicide, to save his friend's lives from the criminal network of one Jim Moriarty.

One last favor she had done for him, 12 years ago...

She had done his autopsy.

Many of her co-workers had ill- advised it. There had been several calls from her relatives pleading with her not to. Her childhood friend, Dolly, had told her,

"Molls, you do this, and you'll never be right in the 'ead again!"

She could not be persuaded. She would do this for Sherlock. For her dear friend...

And they had all been right too. She knew they would be. But still, she had decided to sacrifice that soundness of mind, to give him the honor of a proper autopsy. It was...bad... And just like everyone said, she would never be mentally well again. Had had nightmares. Failed relationships...

She had never been able to let go of him. In a way she felt,he was still with her, in this little room. Maybe more of a shadow at her side as she went about her business.

Her family tried to get her to go back to school. Change careers. She didn't want to. Couldn't.. This is where they had worked together, all those afternoons of her lonely youth. This is where two outcasts could have a sense of belonging. Amongst the silence of the dead,all are equal after all.

She kept a copy of Sherlock's report with her like a Bible. And she would talk to him, when it was late at night, and she was again lonely, in this dark little room, only the dead as company. He was diffrent. To her, he had never died.

Many men had come her way, many dogs she had mistaken for princes in crowns of gold. They had mocked this very precious friendship that had come to such an abrupt and horrible halt all those long years ago. And some had been jealous. Jealous of a dead man? The nerve! The selfishness! Still they had. And jealousy had turned to hate, and hate to blind ambition, and ambitions of vile nature had become rumors, and rumors became names,and names incited fear, and fear became crimes. Crimes, like trying to run her over when she was walking home. Trying to drug her tea.

"Wacky Molly", "Witchy Molly" "Three Eyed Molly" "Sixth Sense". She'd been called it all.

But she wouldn't/couldn't let go of Sherlock. For all the trouble he had caused,still he was worth more good than harm to her. He had listened to her. He had noticed her. He could see the "Invisible Girl".The one most painful name that she called herself. To him, she had mattered. To him, she DID count.

He had needed her. And she had needed him too...

And one night, when she had cried for him in this dark room, praying that he'd come back, and set it all right again, that is when she felt him here.

That is the night, she could hear him talking back to her. Once again the outcasts belonged. No more loneliness...

Today she was smiling bright as sunlight glancing off snow. And he stood cool as the shadow under a great elm tree,just listening, as he often did.

" I tell you ,Sherlock...He's the one...Clark FROM Kent..." she laughed, "My superman..."

Sherlock's silence almost had an air of amusement about it. She smiled, turned to where his shadow lingered by a bottle of utensil cleaner.

'He's diffrent than all the rest, Sherlock...I think...he'll believe me when I tell him about you...Believe that I still hear and see you..."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. She could feel them roll.

_"Who said you had to tell him about me?"_

"Marriage is a huge commitment ,Sherlock! And if he's going to ask(he needs to just go ahead and ask, we're not getting any younger here!) but,...he'll need to know about you..."

_"Afraid I'll scare him?"_

"No, I mean marrying a mortician should be scary enough!"

_"Don't make jokes, Molly. Not when we're being serious, anyway_."

"Alright,so let's be serious, when anyone is visited by a ghost,(sorry, I mean, no offense but you)"

_"It's alright, I've been like this for 12 years...There's no offense taken."_

She giggled awkwardly, "Well,you know, I don't want him to think I'm...crazy..."

_"Maybe he'll be so in love with you it won't matter. That's what people do ,isn't it? They go completely bonkers in the brain, all for such a silly notion as love. Sentiment, ach!, I still don't get it!"_

"You're one to talk about "falling" in love, you've pretty much written the book on that, you know?"

_"That was a practical act to guarantee survival. That wasn't sentiment..."_

"No,Sherlock that was falling in love. Hard and bloody. And that wasn' t the only time..."

_"You're upsetting yourself...Please, don't. So ,love isn't silly, but in my opinion sentiment is. It clogs love like junk food clogs your arteries. Love should be more about nutrition, the feeding of information and mutual need!"_

She laughed,"For once, we agree. That's what I mean to do with Clark. Feed him information. About you."

_"Speaking of feeding information, you have company..."_

Molly turned to find the Watsons standing awkwardly in this little room. She smiled,"Oh hello, we haven't seen each other in a while..."

"For which I apologize..."John said, coming forward, and looking around...

"Are you alone in here, Molly?"

She laughed, and Sherlock smiled at her, arms folded, waiting for the Watsons to notice him.

"You'll just think I'm crazy, which isn't fair, since I know you see him too...Don't lie..."

John closed his eyes, and swallowed,

"Actually,Molly, Sherlock...uh..."

_"You called?"_

John acted as though he couldn't hear him this time. Sherlock was visibly puzzled. Molly felt sadness and sudden dread grip her stomach...

"This is about the file, isn't it? And after all this time..."

"It's time to get to the bottom of it all. Molly, haven't you ever wondered why he's still ..."here"...?"

She swallowed..."I've hidden it, been harassed for all this lately... If you think that maybe...we can find a way..to help him rest in peace though...I'll give it to you..."

"I think I'm going to have to try,.."

Mary standing to the side in silence however DID hear him,

_"You're mistake is to assume I don't already know where I am, or why I am lingering...You're mistake is to assume that I have no choice in the matter. Alright, I'll allow you to meddle, John. But... you aren't going to like what you find at the end of this road..."_


	5. Chapter 5 Dead Man's Intervention

**Dead Man's Intervention~**

Sherlock had never really been patient when it came to awaiting an answer, awaiting the revelation of a case.

The night Molly gave John Sherlock's file was one he would never forget.

Of course, he hadn't opened the literally,and for lack of a better term, bloody wan't strong enough to do it at night, with Mary asleep beside him.

He would not sleep that night. Stole into their living room, attempting to turn the tv on, and maybe make himself tired by watching the lights flicker off the walls, rather than the screen itself.

Every other time he had gone to the "mind palace" he had gone voluntarily.

Only once did Sherlock force him in.

John reached for the remote control when it happened.

_Put it down._

A violent burning in his wrist, and he dropped it on the floor, the batteries falling out of it. He heard Mary softly call his name in her sleep and mutter, "Baby, come to bed, it's 3 in the morning ..."

A sudden buzzing under his chin. He realized the sensation was in the shape of fingers, fingers from a slender ,familiar, loved hand. There was no attempt to stifle a scream,John had longed for the touch of this hand for years, and though he was only feeling a sensation across his face of it, as if his mind were working against the grain to produce such a vivid illusion,still now he did in some way, and welcomed it with tears.

_Come with me..._

John looked back.

_Of course not to say, don't be stupid! She'll need you back... But I have some old bones to pick with you. Mine , infact._

A moment later he was walking to the television, and it turned itself on. He passed out on the floor infront of it, engulfed in white light.

Woke up, in a room of high marble walls. He could hear the ocean breathing, and smell the early morning that's light came through slits in the walls.

He half expected to see him robed in a white cloak over Arthur's golden armor. But no, he was instead dressed in his everday clothes, one of his black blazers , but with a pair of black jeans, and a white shirt he had unbuttoned all the way to the middle of his chest, and he panted and was puffing away on a cigarette, like he were panicing.

"Oh, God..."he cried, when John sat up, and flicked ashes across the floor. It smelled more like incensce. Hopefully, it couldn't hurt him anymore.

"What are you doing, John?"

John shook his head, "Why..why am I here?"

"I need to talk to you!"

"Ok, couldn't it have waited until the morning?"

"In the morning , the both of you will open that bloody file, and then it'll all be for nought."

"What will be for nought?"

"John.."Sherlock stood up,drew to his full height. John rolled over on his stomach, and then stood, not liking the shadow of despair he was casting over him.

"Do not think I brought you here, to comission you. I brought you here to save you. This was my mind palace, and it's somewhere in the middle of Kingdom Come. I am fortifying it , through all the missions I sent you on to be your impenetrable fortress. To save you..."

John shook his head."I'm not the one in need of saving. You are.."

Sherlock was suddenly in furious tears..."I CAN'T BE SAVED!"he cried,through grit teeth. "DON'T YOU SEE WHAT'S GOING ON?!" he suddenly looked at his hands. His own blood welled up from his wrists, and ankles and eyes.

"I..died for you...John. To save you...Don't you understand?! This was never about my legacy. I'd rather just stop existing! This is for you, to protect you from the dangers I left in my wake...! THIS FORTRESS IS MY SOUL! I GAVE IT UP TO SAVE YOU! THE WALLS ARE MY BONES,!" he shrieked inhumanly, and his voice echoed all around him, "THE SEAS ARE MY BLOOD! The wind is my breath, always leaving me. I am hollow. Dead and yet somewhere alive! COMATOSE!"

"Stop it now!" John cried, absolutley horrified. "Easy, your shirt..Oh God..." The white had scarlet streaks, and these he's tears.

Sherlock turned on him, " I never did like suprises, not really. Cases were like an itch, I had to solve them or my skin would crawl. And I never liked keeping secrets from you. I strung you along FOR 12 YEARS! to save you, and now ,now that you're trying to meddle, I'll spill it all, like an intervention, to save you! John, when they did what they did to me,they intended to break you...When I gave you my last gift, I had used the last concious to bind you in this place. To wall you in my soul, use it as your shield, from their torment...that doesn't end, on my side...And I died ,John_my soul died. My spirit went to living hell somewhere in here...somewhere far away from you and Mary , to keep me out, to keep you in, to leave you alone, alone keeps you safe. Away from me. I'm not safe, but I can create safety. I am not an angel,but I'm on their side. But my body...my body is alive...and"

"STOP!" John cried, horror turning into the gnawing fury of desperation. He leaned against Sherlock, the whole mind palace reeling.

"YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU'RE ALIVE?!"

"No, not alive. Dead inside. My body is laying in a kyrogenic coma ,somewhere in the Baskerville laboratory.

"BUT ALIVE?! AS IN PULSE AND RESPIRATION?"

"Only in that sense.."

"AND YOU'VE BEEN ALIVE FOR 12 YEARS?!"

"No,not alive. Dead ,but with pulse. Awake, but asleep. In-between. Molly did the report. Do not open the file, ..."

John screamed at him,almost unintelligibly "ALLTHISTIMEICOULD'VEBEENWORKINGTOWARDSWAKINGYOUUP!"

_**"DON'T!" **_Sherlock shouted, so loudly it sounded like his throat had shattered, and he threw John against the wall.

"DON'T TRY TO SAVE ME!" he screamed again,but now he was out of breath, his face turning grey and purple like he'd taken a beating.

"Don't try to save me..."he choked, and laid his hands on John's face. And was panting,and actually vomitted,but they were in the mind palace, so it only came up as a cloud of dust and nothing.

"Why?" he was suddenly crying, too tired to be angry," Why haven't you told me before now?...I always knew something was wrong. With your being "with and not with" us...Why didn't you let me help you?"

Sherlock shook his head, in tears himself, now just water, red stains from his blood on his high cheekbones, the ones John had always secretly admired very much."I did it all to save you both...To save you both from them..."

12 years, and they never talked about who _they_ had been. Or that last case. But now, now it was time.

"Please, there are pictures, for God and Molly Hopper's sakes,don't open that file. I was so bad, she couldn't determine the cause of death,that's why she still has it! The authorities made up a reason,and gave it back to the military took my body to the lab...to...research what was going on..."

"Oh God..."John moaned. He'd heard enough. Laid a hand on Sherlock's mouth...

"My turn!"

"Please,John, I!"

"No, you can't stop me, you're somewhere lying on a slab of ice, with machines keeping you alive...You're somewhere with vials and meters,and machines...You're somewhere where you can't get to me,unless you wake up,rise up, pick up your bed and walk . I said no. It's my turn. Shockingly, two can play at this game. I said no! I'm going to save you..."

Sherlock swallowed..."You..." he chuckled..."Now you're forcing me to wake up, eh? Well, I accept that challenge,mate..."

John laughed, "I'll tell Mary in the morning; she'll think I'm crazy..."

"Well,actually you are."

John was shaking at the thought of maybe, just maybe, getting to have him back, back from the dead, a second time.

If even Sherlock the Impossible wasn't impossible with God, this just might be real. Might really happen. It had before, hadn't it?

He was shaking,and took Sherlock in his arms, holding his head to his chest, feeling as though morning would never come, that this was a dream he couldn't wake from

But he was going to wake up, by God, and he was taking Sherlock with him!


	6. Chapter 6 Winter's Thawing

**Chapter 6-Winter's Thawing~**

John had waited till he could gather Mary, and Molly Hooper, and Greg Lestrade, the D.I., and even the agents that worked with him most, Sally Donovan and Phillip Anderson, before he decided to tell them, what all he had found out.

For John hadn't attempted more telly that night, when he did wake up from his own mini-coma. Instead he went straight to his computer, Sherlock's voice in his head, giving him evidence. And he pulled up, at that moment a live feed video of the lab, where Sherlock was being tested.

"None of you are going to believe what I have called you here to see. Especially after the backstory I am compelled to give you first, as to how I have continued Sherlock's "science of deduction" all these years...But perhaps, when you see the evidence, it will motivate you to helping me- please, I am very desperate!"

And then he told them the story, of how watching Sherlock's graphic torment the night he died had sent him into a 3- month -long silent trauma, the beginnings of what Mary had come to call "the Oblivion". How desperate to help John,Mary had started to talk to Sherlock, beg him not to be dead, to come and put an end to this madness, explain the last case that had gone so horribily wrong. Explained, how Mary started hearing Sherlock's voice in her head, and how he told her to "concentrate"

"He told her that I was safe inside his "mind palace" as he called it, and that she needed to come to me...She fell asleep at my feet,that night, and had a dream, that I also had, where she,Sherlock, and I, were all gathered again in the old rooms at 221 B Baker Street, and he welcomed us into the mind palace, and began teaching us how to use it...And yes, I know you all think I'm insane, but if you'll bear with me, I'll get to the point of what I'm trying to show you!"

And then he gave an account of the events of last night ending with, "Under his instruction, I managed to find the web address that lead me to seeing this live feed camera view of the lab his comatose body is being kept in somewhere in the Baskerville base, tests being done on his strange condition.." he pulled it up.

"OH!"Lestrade cried, and nearly fell out of his seat. Molly was in tears. Mary had to get up and leave, "I'll fix us some tea, so we can t-talk about it..."she muttered. Donovan and Anderson were speechless, wan, wide-eyed and looking between each other and the screen in absolute horror. John turned from watching their horror, and felt his heart stop.

There was Sherlock, strapped to a large metallic gurney, stood uptight. He was dressed in this form fitting black spandex suit, that reminded one of a ninja. His eyes were closed, and it was clear to see, that he had aged even while comatose, though not drastically, (his raven hair had a little silver around the temples, and there was a crease or two in his brow being the only noticeable changes). A monitor told them he had pulse, but he probably shouldn't have. None of his injuries from the brutal night 12 years ago had ever actually healed properly! The marks in his body, (for the sake of the reader's sleep, I will not say what was done to him, but suffice to say it was very brutal, and had caused him great pain before he slept) were still visible where skin was showing,(which wasn't very much, only his forearms, and below the knee, where his suit stopped). Also the scientists that were studying him were talking to him, and it didnt sound good.

"After all these years, Sherly..." one of them laughed..."And we still haven't found the chemical in your brain that makes it so unique...And Marta is not getting anywhere with her "telepathic therapy", are you?"

A woman came on the screen, a woman with blood red hair, and eyes so green they could have been used for traffic lights...A poisonous green, and they were squinted..."Oh no, I _am_, I think..." Sherlock's face turned toward her, though his eyes didn't open . "I am increasing the potential of said chemical compound...When we can extract it, imagine how weaponizable it will be,huh? An army of super-soldiers, armed with over-observant, logical minds, and vision of above natural clarity. An army of soldiers, with the brilliance of one Sherlock Holmes, but the strong bodies of gods, adapted all from same ,said resiliant chemical compound that made him able to survive such torment..."

She reached, and took Sherlock's face. John wanted to scream at her, "Don't touch him..."he whispered, and Mary came up behind him, and took his hands."Do NOT touch him..." he said only a little louder, and came closer to his computer screen,leaning closer to hear better what she with her quiet coast-of-California accent was saying...Mary let him go closer, but stayed where she was, letting go of his hands, and putting her own to her mouth to stifle the wild urge to scream.

But he never heard what she had intended to say. Something prevented her from saying it.

"MARCUS!"

"Why are you shouting at me, I'm 6 feet away!"

He turned on his heel.

_Told you I would find a way..._Sherlock whispered in John's ear...

"He's starting to wake up!" she growled, as if enraged...

"He's too strong, even with anesthetics, we won't be able to keep him down, Marta.."

"THEN WORK FASTER! WE CANNOT LOOSE THAT COMPOUND, THAT'S 12 YEARS WORTH OF RESEARCH!"

"So what?12 bloody years has only lead me to believe more and more that it doesn't exist,and it's simply Sherlock Holmes is a living crime solving machine, with an amazing will to survive..."

"Prove yourself wrong then, my friend. Because we're running out of time. And if he wakes up, put a bullet through his head. He knows too much!"

_Unfortunately for you, so does John Watson, and Inspector Lestrade..."_

"How long have I got then?"

She clenched Sherlock's jaw, and studied all the machines he was hooked to,

"Give or take , I'd say...72 hours..."

"72 hours?!" Lestrade howled,"How in blazes can they know that? And knowing Sherlock he's liable to wake up in the next 10 minutes just to spite her!"

The words were bouncing around in John's head, like a bird in a greenhouse, who can see the sky through the glass, but just can't get out to it...

_"Looks like the game's afoot again, Captain Watson!"_

John could see the pale face of his friend on screen twitch near the right eye, as if he winked...


	7. Chapter 7 Glass Castle

**Chapter 7: Glass Castle**

John's rage had blinded him. He couldn't see or hear Sherlock inside of his mind for most of the rest of the day, as he and Lestrade were working to put together a research team, and an excuse to go to Baskerville, make it look like they were investigating some kind've chemical spill on base sight or something, so they could sneak into the part of the base where they had traced the footage to. Mycroft had even been contacted by now, and was arranging for an actual non-threatening chemical spill to be staged,so they could get in as clean as possible.

"Getting him out might be a diffrent story,"Lestrade told Mycroft..

"Do you realize I have lost my baby brother not once but TWICE over the span of the last 16 years? I can't even begin to describe what it's like to you, Greg. I watched a child become a man, and watched him fall and by God's grace , rise again, and I stood at the morgue and claimed it was he who had returned from death, lying , tormented and dead , again there on the table, all those years ago. And I've been waiting for his great miracle to happen again, all this time, even though I knew it was beyond all reason. I didn't even have the good grace of a burial, they merely told me the poor thing was so badly mutilated he'd need to be cremated, and that was it! No moment with my baby brother's body. No chance to say a proper goodbye. No chance to tell him that ,though we had had our differences, and we fought,and I was meddlesome perhaps, I'd loved him from first sight like only a big brother can. They wouldn't even let me cut a lock of his hair off ,at request of his twice-bereft mother!-Twice bereft!, what mother ever looses her youngest son _**twice**_?,God rest her soul...The devil and all of his angels won't be able to keep you from bringing him back to me now!"

John cocked his pistol, "No, 'cause they'll have to go through me. I loved him as if he was my own brother, and I also lost him _**TWICE**_! Who?looses?their?brother?TWICE! Hell-On-High-Heels(by this he meant the woman from the lab footage) better hope she can dance to the music she's playing! 'Cause I'll be dancing her into the dark if she tries to keep me from getting to him now!"he gasped and popped his neck,and loosened his shoulders up, ,as always, a soldier and ready for the next round.

Mary came up behind him, slipped his coat over his shoulders and laughed, "Not without me you won't!" she said , cocking her own pistol.

Molly pulled up then in a jeep, with a man they all assumed was Clark from Kent, she had talked about so fondly.

" I finally told him about Sherlock, only now everything makes so much more sense, and when he heard it-"

"When I heard it, I was livid! I don't know this poor bloke, but if Molly was so fond of 'im then 'e musta been great!" he cocked a pistol too, and she whipped out two, and cocked them one after the other, in a seamless action of graceful pivot in her wrists. I can't even describe how effortless the action was, so ready was she to be rid of these "slicks" as they would say in the author's native country. She smiled her useual, nose- wrinkled- a- bit, girlish way.

"Ok, let's bring Sherlock home!" she gasped, showing her teeth in excitement...

Mycroft smiled slyly , and pulled an AK47 from out of his umbrella. Lestrade let out a loud, "WOAH!' and everybody started laughing.

Everybody, that is, except for John.

Because for the first time in 12 years , he had been pulled into the mind palace by neither his, nor Sherlock's volition.

And he heard Sherlock screaming, and that only made his anger burn hotter like a star dying in its own white fury...

He was suddenly standing in a Glass Castle. It was almost the exact replica of the Disney Castle, as a matter of fact, but with the same dreadful aura of the White Witch's dwelling place. And the floor was painted in blood...He didn't want to allow himself to imagine whose. He knew ,anyway.

He wasn't expecting Sherlock to come tearing past him, draped only in a sheet. Nor was he expecting him to turn around, eyes wide as wolf's eyes, and howl the like of one,"She's coming, GET OUT!"

All at once, he was gone, and a fire was lit in the Glass Castle.

And he heard the voice of the woman from the live-stream,

"Sherlock Holmes, I've always admired your resistance...But I swore long ago I will break you, and I'm not gonna lose this battle now!"

There was the sound of snakes hissing. As the Glass Castle lit up in flames, John looked up in horror to see Sherlock, dressed as he was currently in the physical, clinging for dear life to the chandalier..

"John...You have to get out of here..." he begged.

"I'm not leaving without you!"

"John, if I wake up now, she will kill me, kill us both. I forgot to tell you, but when I wove your soul in mine, our minds , and incidently our brains became unified, calibrated, meshed like strands of DNA, I don't know how to describe it!_If I were to choose to let go now, and wake up, it would wake you up to all the horror I've tried to spare you from...Not just these 12 years, but ever since the Fall..."

John was shaking now,"Sherlock,,..."

"I can't come down, so we're going to have to do it like this... You be the soldier again, and do what you do best. Let me do what I do...Which is solve my way out...God willing, this will be over soon...and you and I can FINALLY have some peace..."

"Sherlock,.." John was not aware that he was saying these things aloud where the others could hear him,"Please,...no! Tell me how to get you down..."

The woman came armed with a syringe, "If I have to pry you out of here with every poison yet unknown to man, I will, Sherlock...Outside, I have 72 hours..but in here..." she was smirking, "All the time in the world..."

"The only way you can help me now, is to do as I've asked...Please John,for both our sakes..."

John came back to everybody else with a gasp,and covered his mouth with a shaking hand,

"I..I think, I think she-the woman from the video- is using drugs to torture him...I don't know how, but,...it's working...I could feel him...He's in pain..."

"THAT DOES IT!" Molly shouted, and hopped in her jeep."Get in, Clark! We're bringing him home before dark, or the next autopsy I'll be doing is Hell-on-High-Heels'!

She burned rubber into the distance, but made a long doughnut curve down a couple blocks, and came back, rolling the window down, trying to drive with both pistols in hand,

"Uhm,sorry, how do we get there again?"


	8. Chapter 8 Carol of the Bells

**Chapter 8: Carol of the Bells~**

Not even the flight home from Aghanistan ,injured ,and sick in his mind with PTSD, had been half as agonizing for John as that trip to Baskerville.

For even though Sherlock was willing him out of the mindpalace now, still his will was being bent to nigh the breaking point by the mental torment he was undergoing, and John may not be able to go in to save him, but he could see him therein.

In the mind palace he was screaming his name till his throat felt like he'd swallowed hot outside, in the car with his his wife, and his friends, it came out as a low moaning sound, a pleading with Sherlock to not be where he was, to not be willingly undergoing the torment he was willingly under going.

_I know what I'm doing, John..._

"Doesn't make this ok..."John whimpered, covering his ears, against the carol of the bells.

For before him loomed a great courtyard, of a giant graveyard, where all the stones said one name. Over and over and over again,"Sherlock Holmes".

And out of dark hutches, scattered all across this vast as Eternity graveyard, monks came bearing up replicas of Sherlock's body, wrapped in bloodstained sheets, and buried him again under these cold stones, and he heard him screaming in torment from under ever shadow.

But the worst thing of all, was in the great church, like a giant iron Notre Dame, there was a bell tower with bells, each the size of trolleys, bells of great iron, with great black chains, bells that were smouldering in the heat of the fire they had lit his heart ablaze with, bells that beat against themselves like an anvil, making their own bodies harder, and yet more hollow, and the sound grew deeper, like the thunder rolling from the heat waves of hell.

The bellls pealed out a great music, a funeral march, and the church had a winding staircase ,leading up to the cracked glass of "Dark Notre Dame's" main stain glassed window. The gargoyles were all standing about, with torches and scourges, flailing the burning cathredal's sole occupant with these whips, demanding he pay them restitution for some imagined sins.

Sherlock turned to face John for a moment, against the inferno he was spellbound in. His ocean shaded eyes were filled now with the reflection of amber and red, and his raven hair stood up like a storm cloud, and his alabaster skin had the grit of grey ashes linger on it. He had on a white shirt, or did, before it had been turned to scarlet ribbons by the fall of the scourges. The knee caps were worn out of his dark trousers, from nights in long prayer. Praying God spare John of this miserable end to the kingdom of souls, the walls of the mind palace having been meant to hedge him in, to keep him safe. His feet were bare, and burned black on the bottom, from having to walk up this burnished brass, and ablaze stairwell.

_It's alright...I know what I'm doing..._

"Sherlock, please..."

Suddenly John knew what he was doing too. There are no words in the tounges of men ,or angels, or demons to express the wave of sickness that passed through John's guts, and even his bones. Only God knows , and surely God had fallen silent, maybe grieved to the point of speechlessness by the evil that was being done. There was a hum in the air, a sense that soon God would act, and save him. He 'd have to or he wouldn't make it. For of course, there's only one reason Sherlock Holmes would be playing this game, making so grand an ascension.

But of course, he was going to leap from the top of the cathredal...

_If I believed in such as destiny, I'd say that it's a choice to live as we were created to be...It was always mine to do this, John...for you...I am the Night, and I was born to fall. It's alright..._

"No,Sherlock!It's not!"

Silently John was begging,,"Don't you make me watch this again..."

For just a moment Sherlock was still turned towards him, swaying on his rail- thin frame, on the burning stair case. He smiled, and his eyes shone like stars, and even his face was ablaze with a light like the snow's reflection at twilight in this flame. So sweetly he smiled, it was like an arrow piercing John's heart.

_"It's alright..."_

"Please, can't we get there any faster?"

Lestrade, who was driving this car, Molly and Clark having gone off in their own, had been listening to John's side of the conversation in growing fear...

"No, I'm afraid not..."

John watched Sherlock stumbling up the staircase, being struck down by the cruel gargoyles, and rolling to the bottom of them again, getting up on hands and knees with a moan of effort, spitting the blood from his busted nose out, and trying again. At once crawling, then stumbling, then walking bowed over.

Always rising, but at so slow a pace, surely they had time, surely!

Still great fear and pity and wonder ,at what he was willing to endure on his behalf, filled John, and he felt too sick to throw up.

"What, what are you seeing?"Mycroft, from the front seat, asked, fear making his voice tremulous.

"You don't wanna know, Myc."...John gasped, closing his eyes.

Mary ,sitting next to John in the back, clenched at his hands, and cried...

"Do you know, Mary? Can you see him too?"

"Oh,Mycroft, I can't tell you, I just can't..."

And just then the gargoyles began to sing:

_**"Hark hear the bells, low iron bells,**_

_**All now will say, You die today,**_

_**Phantoms are here, evoking fear,**_

_**Once you were told, you shan't grow old,**_

_**Rising on the song of sirens, rising on the song of sirens!**_

_**Hark hear the bells ,low iron bells,**_

_**List' as they say, you die today,**_

_**Today you learn,**_

_**All things shall burn,**_

_**You were on the angels side,**_

_**Those angels lied,**_

_**Now you will learn,**_

_**Angels can turn,**_

_**Rising on the song of sirens!rising on the song of sirens!**_

_**Hear the bells call, who bears your pall?**_

_**You shall alone, lie under stone,**_

_**Today you shall fall,**_

_**Falling ,falling by the doom of Dante! Falling, falling by the doom of Dante!**_

On they went with voices mocking a Christmas hymn, once pure and an anthem of light, but now twisted for sport in the way evil twists all things that are white and pure.

And John cried, as Sherlock stood up tall, and clenched his jaw in determination. One gargoyle who looked familiar in face, but was etched now in stone, leaped in his path,"It's too easy, it's always too easy, Sherlock!"

He grabbed the creature by the throat."Out of my way...I have come to far to be deterred by you. Maybe it is too easy. Maybe an "elementary" solution is the only way this time!"

He cast the creature down, and rose up with haste in his step, and was lost to their vision in a wave of flames.


	9. Chapter 9 Sins of the Fathers

**Chapter 9: The Sins of the Fathers~**

It all happened in a rush, so fast, John, being so preoccupied with that last glimpse of Sherlock ascending into hell, that he barely noticed them arriving in Baskerville, "investigating" the chemical spill, and then being escorted to the lab by some on base personel to "finish up" as Mycroft had put it.

And now here was Lestrade, and even Molly, and Mary, and Mycroft, and John himself, all holding "Marcus"and "Marta" at gunpoint demanding to know what they had done with Sherlock.

They had moved him.

"Don't be so sore, handsome."Marta said to John, making a "kissy" face. "See, Sherlock's not the only one who does things for love..."

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!"he screamed very truthfully not having a clue, having not been totally cogniscent this entire while,

"WHERE IS HE?!"

"Relax. Actually, now that I've got what I wanted, which was revenge, I'm giving you a confession. You know that guy the lot of you blew to kingdom come on your last case to Baskerville? What was it something about a "Harry White"'s dad being eaten by a great hell hound? Pshhh,, the guy , the genius,that Sherlock bullied and made to look like he was guilty of murder, and then blew to hell?...yeah,that was my dad."

Silence fell, as everything was being understood.

"I was a love child of his and a "dancer" to put it gently,at a club in Las Vegas,Nevada... They corresponded secretly over the years,on count of me...When mom found out what happened to dad, and that it was Sherlock Holmes' fault..." she hissed, and popped her neck."She wanted revenge." she smiled, cold and snakelike.."But I told her "fear not, mommy dear," said I, "I'll get justice for daddy...I'm a scientist!" The best at what I do, and what I do best is cause people to see things that aren't really there. With hallucigenics..." she smiled..." To avoid alot of fancy terminology, I am a scientist of what really frys a person's brain...I make weapons that work on bad guys' minds. In a way, it's like going on safari, and taking down "the big cat",and my"big cat", my "great white whale" if you take my meaning , his name was Sherlock Holmes...And how was I going to make him suffer?...Easy...I'd go after his family like he went after mine...And when he wouldn't let me have you, John, Mary..."she winked,"Yes, I know your names! When he wouldn't let me have you, and solved my little mock case, and played right into my hands, and let me torture him before you that night...right, you don't remember that very well do you? The chemicals I had released at the crime scene were a guarantee that all the witnesses would have false evidence. Nobody would know what really happened, eh?, but yes, that really was me, and what I really did do, how I tortured him, is as good, if not better than you remember, or don't,huh?.."

John shot at her feet, "Easy, you won't need your gun much longer...And besides, if you kill me, how are you gonna find where Sherlock is, huh?" she seethed,"Well, all of that I did to him,actually I out-did myself. He didn't die like he was supposed to! So I kept your precious little detective..And I've run tests. For 12, what is it you Brits say? 12 BLOODY years(literally)," she giggled, "I did tests to find out what was unique about the mind of Sherlock Holmes that made him able to endure my torment, huh? It turns out he's just a highly sociopathic freak with a tendency to want to live through just about anything. So I've decided to scratch this study. And blow the lab to high heaven!" she pulled out a grenade,

"See you on Judgement Day!" she cried, and pulled the pin.

"OUT!"John shouted, the Afghan veteran kicking in, and he cleared the room, before he realized that Sherlock may have still been somewhere on sight.

He sat like a dazed owl in the ashes,blinking at the threatening of tears, the others hauling themselves up, and attesting possible damage.

"I'm ok," Molly was saying to Clark. Lestrade and Mycroft were still dazed. Mary was shouting angrily at the woman who had just commited "hare kare".

"Have I just lost you again?" John silently asked, feeling the tears spill over against his will. "You know they say the third time's a charm!"

_Look up._

Somehow a piece of blueprint was floating down to him.

"Clever, Sherlock! I'm coming!"

"John, wait!" Mary cried, trying to crawl to him.

"No,no darling. Are you hurt? You need to stay here and make sure you're ok.I must go and get him myself." John gasped, kneeling in front of her, very quickly checking her over, and then kissing her , very anxiously...

"Are you alright, baby? You've gotta stay here, ok?"

"I'm ok, John, go get him, quickly..."

John kissed her again, and laid her down on her side, running madly towards the place on the blueprint marked "Sherlock's division"

_No, don't come in here! The whole things getting ready to blow!_

"Shut up, I'm not leaving you!"~


	10. Chapter 10 The Arms of Grace

**Chapter 10: The Arms of Grace~**

John was only halfway inside the burning barracks where Sherlock was being kept on ice when he wasn't being run through machines, when it hit him as hard as a wall of bricks. His last excursion into the mind palace.

He felt his heart wrench itself, like it were writhing in poison.

For there stood Sherlock, on the broken window's pane, looking down from the cathredal's burning ruin to the ashes of the loneliest graveyard in all of the Universe, the graveyard where one man lies...

And John thought to himself, "Not this time..." as somehow he felt his mobile ringing, and pulled it out of his pocket.

With a gasp of smoke, he realized Sherlock had somehow rung his real mobile with his mind, and he was on the phone whilst he tried to muscle his way through the collapsing building his friend's comatose body was being held "prisoner" ,for lack of a better term ,in.

"Hello? You couldn't have picked a better time to call!"

Sherlock, in the mind palace, was suddenly also on his phone, "Well, here we are again..."

"Sherlock, we aren't having this conversation again...You are going to have to let me come up there to you, this time.."

Sherlock, even from this distance, was in tears,"I told you, I can't be saved. But I'm going to save you, by God."

"N-no! No, shut up, just shut up, and listen to me! This is all in your head...It's too easy, it's really too easy this time...Sherlock. All you've got to do is wake up. Just open your eyes, this is just a dream..."

Sherlock was shaking his head, "The part about you being in danger wasn't.."

With a lurch to his stomach and a pain in his head, John realized the only way to get Sherlock safely down from up there, was to convince him coming down (the proper way!)was the only way to save John himself. Suddenly desperate, he shouted, "Help me! Help me, Sherlock!"

Sherlock froze, where he was, having been a hair away from saying his classic line and casting aside his mobile.

"John?!"

"Sherlock, please, I need you to come down...I, I can never get out of here without you! This is _your _ Kingdom Come remember! When you walled me in here, you didn't show me the fire escape. Sherlock, before I burn to ruins with the rest of the mind palace, please, only you can save me. If you want to save me, please, please save me from this!" And there was very real desperation in John's voice, and he didn't have to act, or turn on the "crocodile tears" as they would say in the author's native country. No, the tears he was crying, were very real, and simply ones he'd been supressing now ever since that night he watched him "die". Oh yes, he had cried since then, even today. But he was sobbing now, beyond his control,

"Please..." was the only word he could force up. The look on Sherlock's face was one of panic, as desperate to save him, as John was to get him out of here.

Still on the phone, Sherlock gasped and looked back, and sudden anxiety, like John had never heard in its kingly depth , boyish anxiety, riddled the beloved voice that John had not heard in far too long, and was still not really hearing, except in his mind:

"It's all on fire, I can't go back the way I came! The only thing I can do is jump!"

And John realized that , while jumping to kill himself would be in essence giving up, and surrendering atlast to his coma, jumping to be rescued would save him. He'd also heard you always woke up from a "falling dream". And this being a mental realtiy, Sherlock's body couldn't actually be harmed if he did hit the ground, accidently. "Then you will have to let me catch you..."

"JOHN,DON'T BE FOOLISH!"

"Sherlock, this time you're going to have to trust me..."

Sherlock swallowed.

"Ok...Ok, I trust you."

"Then come to me..."

It was John's turn to cast aside his mobile(though in the physical he just put it back in his pocket), and spread his arms like an eagle.

Sherlock threw his aside, and balanced, looking like a crane on perch, and readying to dive for fish. He swallowed, and put his arms out.

John leveled himself up under him, begging God that he was right about his not being able to be hurt if he did fall.

Sherlock took a deep breath, and leaped.

John watched in agony ,reliving St. Bart's, as Sherlock fell through Dante's many circles of smoke. But rather than hitting the ground,he fell heavily in John's arms.

And John was sent back into the physical world, hard. Harder than all the other times he'd left the mind palace. Also a greyish haze he didn't realize had been over his eyes ,for 12 years, was gone. He could see as clear as he could when he was a teenager, which is saying something when you're 40+.

He knew in his heart, and gasped with relief, that Sherlock had woken up.

And then for the first time in 12 years, he heard his voice out loud, and wept outwardly atleast half-again as hard as he was weeping a moment ago inwardly.

All he said was , "Please..." a very quiet , smokey wheeze from somewhere in the corner of this far eastren end room.

"Please, Is someone, is someone there? Help..." he croaked, unable to shout.

"I'm here!"John shouted though, voice like angelic song to Sherlock's ears at the end of that long dark night.

"I'm here, Sherlock!" he shouted, running to where he'd heard his voice coming from~


	11. Chapter 11 Rising to Shine

**Chapter 11: Rising To Shine~**

John came running to the sound of his voice. The heat of the fire had caused the icey bed he'd laid on in "kyrogenic" sleep to melt , issuing forth like the water breaking from the womb. And there he lay "born again",you might say, gasping for breath, eyes blinking wildly, muttering sounds of disturbance, and struggling against the metallic rail of the "bed" he'd been lying on all this time..He coughed, and looked up.

"JOHN!" he cried, and John couldn't make a sound for the tears blinding and choking him, more than smoke.

"What the heck is going on?! Why am I dressed like this? Where even are we?!" he cried, trying to thrash, and it looked kind of like the squirming an infant makes when you put the little fellow in bathwater for the first time, too weak in their new little body to do anything about being in said water, but shuddering at its most unpleasant cold. Of course Sherlock would be weak, his muscles hadn't been used in 12 years!

John felt the wind knocked out of him. A few days ago, Sherlock was dead. Flat out, murdered-in-cold-blood-for-the-second-time-!-dead. And now here he was trying to get up out of the laboratory wreckage he was lying in.

John crawled to him, unable to contain his giddiness, made a strange half-giggling/ half-choking sound, and kissed Sherlock firmly on the cheek.

Which took Sherlock by suprise, and his eyes went wide as silver dollars, and he lay there and let John cradle him ,and bawl, for what seemed like a long moment in a burning building, but really wasn't so long at all...

"Hey!" he gasped suddenly, taking Sherlock by the face, smoothing his wild hair out of his eyes.

"Hey..."he replied, confused, but he managed to smile. Which made John weep that much harder.

"Why are you crying?"

John kissed his forehead, making no attempt to answer..."OH! I've got to get you out! The buildings about to blow!"

"But you're crying, what's happened?"

John simply cried harder, and reached, and took Sherlock up on his shoulders. All those years wasting away in a coma made him very light.

With a cry of pain but needing to get out NOW , John dove through a mostly burned-out wall.

The two of them were rolling away from the explosion just a few seconds later ,in the grass.

John popped up, unhurt despite what all just happened, and suddenly anxious, "Oh my God, have I hurt you?!..."

Sherlock was lying on his face now, but sat up, curly raven hair(which had only been trimmed in little ugly places to keep it from becoming unmanageable, and lay in all kinds of wierd angles about his face) having fallen in his eyes, and he spit out a mouthful of grass, and curiously watched a glow-in-the-dark bunny trot past him, casually.

"John, what the bloody devil is going on?!"

John rolled him over on his back, "Did I hurt you? Break anything? God!, just when I thought your arms couldn't get any spindlier,_you look like a T-Rex!"

Sherlock looked down at his shriveled arms and legs, slightly annoyed, "Oy vey,mmmm" he groaned seeing what they looked like,

"Ok, so that isn't exactly right, stupid bloody transport!" he sat up, shakily. "John!What has happened! Why do I look like a cartoon character?! Why is the world on fire?! Why are you crying-wait!"

In a sweep of his eyes, he deduced everything that happened in the last 12 years,

"Oh...Right..." he groaned.

John brushed it off, "You'll figure it out, even if you don't remember it all right away, but you've been in a coma now for 12 years..."

"12 YEARS!"Sherlock cried, and wheeled on him, "Me? Who used to sleep once, on average, every 72 hours? Remind me not to sleep again for the rest of my natural life,"

"Well actually passing out, and comatose is not a natural action the brain actively does to restore you, it's kind of an emergency thing, that..."

Sherlock laughed, "Thank you, Doctor Watson. The point remains, I've been asleep for 12 BLOODY YEARS! Who has been keeping London's underworld at check this whole time?!Oh the cold cases, I can't bear to..."

He was starting to sound child-like , and getting very upset. John pressed a finger to his lips, "Shooshshoosh!" he gasped, exasperated, "If it makes you feel better, actually you HAVE been solving cases this whole your , um,for lack of a better term, sleep. Via the mind palace, you showed me how to get inside, you solved and I relayed the messages and..."

Sherlock's eyes grew wide,and he took John by the face,with weak and shaking hands, and he was in sudden tears,

"Oh...I remember _everything_ now...But nevermind, atleast I have not been totally idle...The point is, now you ..are safe..."

And John started crying all over again, and took Sherlock in shaking arms,and Sherlock wrapped his little T-Rex numbers around him, and weakly returned the embrace..."Why do they, my limbs I mean, look like that?"

"Well, since you haven't used your muscles in so long, they've shriveled up and stopped making more tissue. They'll get back to normal pretty quickly now that you'll be using them again."

John slipped Sherlock up on his shoulders then, and started carrying him back to where the others waited for them, anxiously.

"SHERLY!"Mycroft shouted, as soon as they appeared over the hill.

"Why does everybody look...old..?Well old_er_?"

"Sherlock, remember, I told you, it's been 12 years." John replied calmy, patting his knee ,that was trembling away relentlessly.

Mary about knocked them both on the ground, and after alot of affection,and blubbering, she took Sherlock's hair in her hands,and gasped,"We're going to need to do something about this!"

Sherlock smiled at Molly who came and threw her arms around him and John too, being he was still on John's back, not waiting for him to put him down, because this was a double embrace of ecstacy and thanks,thanks for bringing him home.

"So this is superman,huh?" Sherlock laughed, and Clark blushed. Molly made a soft, "Mhhmmm" sound through her nose, and clung to them both tighter.

And Mycroft took him off of John's back, and spun him in a circle, laughing,

"Now, you really have gotten old!" he jeered.

"Oh, you have no idea how long I've wanted to hear you insulting me, dear brother!" he wept,and held him close. Sherlock laughed, suprised, and held him back as best as his skinny arms could.

And even Lestrade came and hugged him. "You've gotten older too, but you've always been grey so it's not so noticeable,"Sherlock laughed.

"Thanks for pointing out the obvious, Sherlock."

John came and carefully eased him on the ground."Mary, darling, bring me my medical bag ,would you, please? Need to have a look at all of you after this mess, Sherlock first being he's the worst off..."

Sherlock sat up on his shaky elbows,and looked dizzily around,

"Speaking of pointing out the obvious*ehem* ,hey,Myc? How 're you gonna explain this to your superiors?"

"I'm going to tell them it was your fault, of course.."

"Alright, boys, Sherlock's been awake for all of 20 minutes, let's not do this right now, please..."John laughed, and went about the business of "doctoring" them all.~


	12. Chapter 12 Meet You in the Morning

**Chapter 12~Meet You in the Morning**

No more than a few weeks ago, Sherlock was dead, forever and the last time, so they all had been led to believe.

And then from out of his coma, he had spoken to them.

And then the old-wound mystery had been revealed, the case had been disclosed, the revenge seeking scientist was dead, and her colleuges arrested for murder, and would be dealt with according to British law.

And as for Sherlock, he moved in with the Watsons for a while. They currently had a two story home somewhere in the nicer neighborhoods of London.

They lived downstairs, and he moved in upstairs.

One morning, John slept in. Felt his wife kiss him, and say, "I'm going shopping with the girls,baby, I'll see you this evening..."

He muttered something that sounded like, "Ok, love you, see you..." and rolled over. And fell asleep to the sound of violin music.

He woke up a couple hours later, remembering said violin music.

But that had to have been just a dream... Because the maker of such sweet music was long ago laid in his grave?

Still, he couldn't help but sit up and entertain such a dream, smiling, tears streaming softly down his face, in the light of the sun floating in from his bedroom, about the last time he fell asleep to violin music playing elsewhere in the house, whilst it was still dark out. It was about 15 years or so ago, when he lived in 221 B, on Baker Street..When he lived with..

He heard his voice then,and his hair stood on end. Escorting someone to the door,

"I'm glad I can help you, Mr. Kirkwell. And , as I said, if it is what I believe it to be, your grandmother's ring will be back in your possesion in no time."

"I'm just glad that you're back in the land of the living, ! Didn't I get lucky?"

"I believe in a Divine Hand at work before I believe in luck, Mr. Kirkwell..."Sherlock laughed, and held the door for him, "And I will get back with you about this before this evening."

John felt his stomach leap to his throat. The last two weeks flooded over him like Noah's deluge. This wasn't a dream. There really had been music, and a voice, and that was the real sound of humming, and barefeet shuffling about in the hallway, and the jingling of a spair key twirled in a now strong -again hand.

John was on his feet, and flying to the living room the three of them shared, before he was even aware that he was moving.

He stopped short.

There in the living room, hands in his hair, trying to think about 15 billion or so things at once, he stood. Looking like he'd just stepped out of a "band box", as the old people say in the author's native country, as always dressed so nicely( yes, even to the "nines"as those old folks say in the land of my home) clothes pressed, same black blazer, and dark pants, he'd always worn, collar rumpled on the wine colored shirt he was wearing. Couldn't find his shoes...Was smiling pleasantly, and for no reason at all, except that he was alive.

Alive. Healthy ,too. Actually, now when he recovered, he recovered so beautifully, his health was even better than that of his 20's and 30's. He was better cared for now, anyway...

He turned around, letting go of his hair, which was now neatly cut back to the way it had always looked when he was younger, and even tousled with his fingers, it still looked so much better than it had when they'd found him.

"Oh, good morning, John. As per useual, my shoes are trying to hide from me."

Good morning, John.

Not0" goodbye". Not "I'll see you again". "Good morning". Meaning this was real, that the night and its dreams were passed over, and in his wake, in Sherlock's wake, they could start anew. All that was sad was washing away with the light London drizzle falling ,it seemed straight out of the sun.

He knew in his heart it was going to be ok now...

"Good morning, Sherlock..." he whispered, smiling slowly, and for a long moment, just trying to get their bearings , as a new day, unclouded with the pain of past harm, a brand new day to start again, began, they just staired at one another.

"Your shoes,...I'll help you look..."

"Thank you."

They set to it, each enjoying the others silent companionship, as they did.

It's a curious thing when the morning brings more rest, than the long and painful watches of a cold, and sleepless night. But the shadow had passed over, and the rest of the Sun had come, and the night, at last had, ended.

Now it was morning, and he was awake...

**~The End**


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